Elle s’appelait Sarah
Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Writer: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, Serge Joncour
Based on: Tatiana De Rosnay‘s novel
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot, Michel Duchaussoy, Aidan Quinn

Plot:
In 1942, the (jewish) Starzinsky family gets arrested in the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup. In her panic, little Sarah (Mélusine Mayance) hides her even smaller brother in the closet before they all get brought away. While they’re detained, Sarah grows ever more frantic to get back to her little brother.
60 years later, journalist Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas) wants to write an article about the Roundup’s anniversary. But during her research she discovers that her family is a lot closer connected to the events than she originally thought.

The book this movie is based on might actually be good. Kristin Scott Thomas certainly was. But unfortunately both the screenwriting and the directing really were not up for the job.

I haven’t read the book, but the story told was interesting and I can see it working as a novel very well. It would have worked as a film as well, if it hadn’t been so inexpertly handled, especially by Gilles Paquet-Brenner. The dialogues and the script were already bad enough – wooden and naive – but it was the directing that really took the cake.

Most of the time I just felt like I was caught in a bad school play with an important message, populated by enthusiastic amateur actors who have no idea what they’re doing and nobody who could teach them otherwise.

And in the middle of it all Kristin Scott Thomas who is wonderful and does know how to act and gets everything that’s interesting out of her character. She is the movie’s saving grace.

Though even she is not enough to make it actually very good and towards the end even her charm is not enough anymore to keep you interested in the story: Once the war was over, I just didn’t care about Sarah’s fate anymore. And without that, the movie doesn’t work at all.

Summarising: well-intentioned but a miss.